Koga Ningyo are a Nagasaki craft with a 400 year history. Kenichi Ogawa is the nineteenth generation in his family to practice the art. Despite this impressive background, he speaks with a light, almost careless tone. Look a little deeper and it seems that in his own way, he may have found a key to preserving a fading tradition for the next generation.
Interview by Takafumi Suzuki
Translation by Claire Tanaka
Watching you work, I got the impression that you concentrate very deeply while you’re making the figures.
Is that how it looked? (laughs) Well, it’s my job after all. I do try to be serious about making them. I’m the nineteenth generation, so I do have a bit of responsibility. Just now I was painting the eyes. With Koga Ningyo, we paint the eyes in first. If you screw up the eyes it’s all ruined, so we do them first so it doesn’t matter so much if we mess up. If you haven’t drawn in anything else, the base is white, so you can easily shave a bit off and erase your mistake.
Drawing in the eyes is often considered to be an act of putting one’s soul into the creation, so I imagine you have to be quite spiritually focused when you do it.
I’m probably just concentrating naturally. People often ask me, “are you putting your soul into it?” but I’d be too embarrassed to say something like that myself. I couldn’t do such repetitive work day in and day out if I thought things like that.
But you seemed to be in quite a pure state of thought-free concentration.
Yes. I don’t go thinking I’ll eliminate all my thoughts, but in the course of my work I might just naturally be entering that state. Now that you mention it, I hold my breath when I draw the eyes. (laughs) At any rate, I’ve been doing this since I was twenty-one. But actually, I’m far from thought-free. There are plenty of useless thoughts running through my mind. (laughs) But I do try my best to do good work.
Now, could you tell me what kind of history the Koga Ningyo have?
Koga Ningyo are right up there with Kyoto’s Fushimi Ningyo and Sendai’s Tsuchi Ningyo as three of Japan’s most famous clay figures. If you go right back to the origin, the history is incredibly old. The Ogawa family business was founded in 1592. My family was originally in the farming business. During the time of the third generation, Ogawa Kosaburo, a clay artisan from Kyoto named Hitachinosuke just happened to come along and stay at the Ogawa family home. He was on a sightseeing trip. They say he taught the secrets of making clay objects to Kosaburo while he was staying at the house.
So they did something that was quite common in Japan back then, doing half farming and half craftwork.
Yes. They worked at farming and also did the clay work on the side, and I think that over time they arrived at what is the current design for the figures we make now. During the Edo Period, Nagasaki was a city that did trade with the likes of China and the Netherlands. The upbeat appearance and bright colors came from that era.
They really are brightly colored figures.
Well, some of the unique features are that we use primary colors, and that images of Dutch and Chinese people are a common motif. Now, we make about sixty different types of figures, but apparently there used to be over a hundred different variations. It’s as if the things that the Ogawa family craftsmen saw around them in Nagasaki four hundred years ago have been preserved in the form of the figures we make.
How did you come to take over the business from the previous generation?
After I graduated from high school, I worked for Mitsubishi Shipbuilding for three years. But it was hard for me to get along with the other people in the company, so I decided if that was how it was going to be, then I’d go and work in the family business. I suppose it was a natural course of events. My father had a day job as a public servant, and my mother helped him out in the shop, and that was how they preserved the Koga Ningyo tradition. But I didn’t think I would be able to work a steady job outside the home and then make the figures on my days off, so I worked it so I could get by with just making the figures.
How did you learn how to make the figures?
My mother had been doing most of the work, and I had been watching her and helping her since I was in elementary school, so I learned it over time, bit by bit.
Did you have the sense that you would take over the business ever since you were a child?
Oh no. But around here, it’s always the oldest son who takes over the family business, so in a way I guess I knew it was only a matter of time. I never personally felt that it was anything special. For me, this is just normal, everyday work.
But if you compare a figure maker to a white collar office worker, it’s a pretty special job, don’t you think?
Yes, if you compare it. But, when I was a child, we often had people come from the mass media like television and magazines, as well as having tourists come to view the family workplace. But when I was a kid, I avoided all that. Once, I was made to appear in a commercial for Koga Ningyo as the Ogawa Family, with my father and my little brother. But I really hated all that.
I see. So you don’t go for pomp and circumstance. You’ve got quite a laissez-fair attitude. I mean, you don’t seem burdened by this.
You could be right. I couldn’t really say I feel as though I have the “weight of tradition pressing down on my shoulders.” Rather, I prefer the “it’s work but it’s also play” attitude. (laughs) I just go at it naturally, and when I start to feel down, I just let myself be down. If I didn’t work that way, I couldn’t keep on at this. I’m struggling just to put food on the table. In this day and age, it’s hard to earn a living just from making figures.
Is that so. But, listening to you talk, I don’t get a sense of pessimism from you at all.
It’ll fold when it folds. I mean, I’m always working my hardest to make them, but the figures, one of these days they’re going to go down. (laughs) There’s a big chance it’ll happen during my generation. And if that happens, I’m going to have to find some other way of making a living. So for now I’m not giving up. I figure I might as well enjoy myself as I make the figures. But as long as I’m living, I’ll keep making Koga Ningyo. Even if I end up having to get another job, I’ll make them on the side and just sell them out of my home, like “if you find one you like, you can buy it” style. (laughs)
I really get a sense for your strong attachment to Koga Ningyo. Now lastly, what are your plans for the future?
One of these days I’m thinking I might start to do online sales. And as far as a successor, my nephew is a little smart-aleck, but he says he wants to do it. Mind you, he’s still just in junior high. (laughs) But if he is going to do it, I’d like him to be able to relax and take it on without feeling too much pressure.
Koga Ningyo
Nakazato-machi 1533, Nagasaki City, Nagasaki
Kenichi Ogawa
Born in Nagasaki in 1962. Koga Ningyo Craftsman
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PingMag MAKE is the sister site to PingMag. We use an interview format to put the spotlight on a wide range of people active in rural areas. We document the voices of these unknown heroes and broadcast them to the world. It’s the Japan-based magazine about people and making things, coming out once a week. We’re passing on the passion, ideas, skills, and life stories of people who are building today and exploring tomorrow: craftsmen, engineers, entrepreneurs, and inventors. Stay tuned!
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